When I mention that I’m working on a game about urban planning, the first reaction I get is often “oh, you mean like SimCity?”

Not exactly. SimCity is the most well-known city planning game/toy of all time. It teaches a particular brand of city-planning knowledge. You, as the planner, allocate resources across a grid in a technocratic (possibly totalitarian) exercise. Evaluating SimCity as rhetoric, it is probably one of the more persuasive pieces of media on urban planning ever designed (how many people have learned biases about siting toxic facilities by playing this game?).

But what exactly is learned by playing Sim City?

Succeeding at Sim City (just like any other game) involves learning and mastering the rules of a system.

The rules in this case, happen to be models of how a real city might work. SimCity insofar as it is a winnable “game” is a series of interrelated hidden assumptions for the player to discover through trial and error. Does building more police precincts reduce crime and civil unrest? Yes, according to SimCity. Is a low-tax base critical to popular support, also yes!

Paul Starr has a great article about the Congressional Budget Office and the Simcitification of actual government here.

One amusing demonstration of SimCity’s assumptions taken to their logical extremes Magnasanti, the project of architecture student Vincent Ocasla.

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Gilda’s Gaming Adventure continues…

Today I planned to share my experience with the 1970 board game, SMOG. But that’s not going to happen. For two reasons:

1. I didn’t play the game. You would think an urban planner who lives in L.A. could just instinctively play something called SMOG.  But I couldn’t figure it out! (Maybe one of you already knows how and can teach me?).




2. Another game opportunity appeared! Tony Chavira –  fourstory.org associate editor and Havana travel-buddy — and I had a little comment exchange on my post about Monopoly City:

Tony:  Gilda! I’d love to help you take the game Risk and replace troops and cards with money and lobbyist goals.

Gilda: OK! Let’s do it. Just so you know….you will have to teach me Risk. I’m new at the game thing, but jumping right in.

Tony: Let me know when and we’ll put it together! i’ll even bring over my own version of risk and we can play. it’s essentially a world-war game where you’re given strategies on cards and actual military. i’d probably add another rule that you collect cards (more troops in the game, which will be government cash for redevelopment probably) when you lobby for it. but the game has strategy cards, so yeah… more fun to be had!

So that’s what happened.

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James Rojas is an urban planner who devotes a lot of his time to translating the impenetrable maps and language of land use planning into a activities that are visual, tactile, and playful — the language of how we actually experience the world.

James’ basic goal is to create environments that elicit ordinary people’s ideas and solutions to urban problems.

“I’m always amazed by people’s ideas and solutions — its mind-boggling how many creative ideas people have.”

To James, ideas are the golden currency of city-building.

Imagine that.

Here’s a 3-minute video that runs you through the process and its party spirit.  A more detailed explanation follows as the article continues below.

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Over the past few months, Rosten Woo and I have teamed up with Esperanza to create an online (and off-line) game to help familiarize people with zoning as a fundamental planning tool.

The reason for creating a game is to make  sure that the learning is interactive and fun.  (As opposed to boring and dull, which, with all due respect to my chosen profession, is what comes to mind for most people when you say the word “zoning.”)

We needed to test our game ideas before we got too deeply into the time-consuming  production work that online games require.

So we decided to start with a game that people can play face-to-face in a room.  A board game.

After some back-and-forth experimentation we came up with a rough prototype and then play-tested it with a stalwart crew of smart, activist health promoters from Esperanza.

The results of that are best captured in the following conversation:

Rosten: So let me get this straight. You didn’t have any fun at all? Ever?
Gabby: No.

Enough said.  So it was back to the proverbial drawing board. Or in this case — game board.

Unlike Rosten (and my daughter Chelsea, who beats me at any and all games) I am not a gamer. I like games like charades and scrabble because I like drama and words. So I clearly needed to get up to speed.

I read a book that Rosten turned me on to by Jesse Schell called the Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.  Its a kind of applied philosophy of games, written very conversationally. Read More…